Kuck Family History: From Maryland to Iowa

At the age of 16, John Kuck left the port of Bremen on 20 June 1853 on the ship the Arnold Boninger bound for Baltimore in the United States. His name was logged as the 186th passenger. The ship's roster was comprised of 416 people mostly in family groups and with occupations spanning from farmer, to watchmaker to passenger number 415, Heinrich Meyer who was a saddle maker. I'm not sure what to make of him as John would later marry a Mary Meyer later on and become a saddle maker. Whomever Heinrich was, he never made the trip as the roster lists him deceased, having committed suicide by jumping overboard. The average age on the trip was only 22-1/2 years helped by the three births that occurred on the voyage to America. 81 adults and 7 children occupied the cabin and house on the main deck of the ship while 307 adults and 21 children occupied the internal cargo hold as steerage. I'm sure John was in the latter group.

The ship Arnold Boninger was named after the owner's father who had it build out of oak on an iron frame in Vegesack which is a suburb of Bremen along the Weser river which leads out to the Wadden Sea. From the bottom up it had a hold, an internal cargo deck and an upper deck and drew 18 feet of water. Ship owner Carl Boninger built the ship for the express purpose of hauling American tobacco to Germany and returning with new immigrants bound for the United States. It, along with immigrant John Kuck and 415 others, arrived in the port of Baltimore on 15 August 1853.

The ships register listed John's final destination as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but it is unknown if he ever went there. According to a short biography listed for him in the History of Floyd County, Iowa, he left the ship for Wheeling, West Virginia, completely on the opposite side of the state of Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and only after two months there, headed to Marietta, Ohio which was a little over 80 miles down the Ohio River. There, according to the biography, he learned the harness making trade.

John stayed there for four years and then at 20 years of age, moved to Le Sueure, Minnesota where he was a partner in a general merchandise business. It must not have suited him for 1 year later, around 1857 or 1858, he sold his share in the business and moved to Galena, Illinois. He practiced his harness making, a direct competitor to the Grant family (parents of Ulysses Grant) in the leather goods business. By 1860, John was 23 and married Mary Meyer, an immigrant from Switzerland on 31 May of that year. They quickly located across and up the Mississippi River to Lansing, Iowa where John opened up his very own harness shop. He ran that shop for several years before selling and moving one more time to Charles City, Iowa where he would spend the rest of his life becoming quite wealthy as a result of his harness making trade.